Here’s a disturbing update to last week’s: amazing story about the U.S. mole who infiltrated al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and thwarted an airliner attack with a more sophisticated underwear bomb.

Someone in Washington whose boss stood to gain from an election year: story about alert: intelligence operatives successfully protecting American voters at great personal risk leaked the heroic story to the Associated Press. The AP held the story until Obama administration sources said the CIA operative was safe.

But, it turns out, the mole was not a CIA operative. The Obama administration had nothing to do with the operation and, in fact, didn’t even know about it until recently. Somehow such details got lost in all the excited espionage news coverage about the bomb that didn’t go off.

The sting was, in reality,: an operation by Britain’s MI6 intelligence service (see photo above of its unassuming: headquarters tucked away in an obscure: corner of London).: It used a Yemeni native with dual: British and Saudi citizenship with the cooperation of Saudi Arabia’s intelligence service.

And the folks overseas who actually conceived and executed: the risky work are none too happy about their loose-lipped American cousins trying to bolster someone’s domestic political standing by leaking the story prematurely, destroying the agent’s cover and future usefulness. And possibly betraying that agent’s contacts within Yemen.

[…]Without the excited U.S. news coverage, the agent, who reportedly did escape safely once word was flashed about the impending AP leak story, could have still been: providing further intelligence on the location of al Qaeda leaders in Yemen, which resulted in only one successful drone strike before word got out, resulting in the explosive demise of senior leader Fahd al-Quso.

According to: Britain’s Guardian,: CIA professionals are furious at Obama administration officials for leaking the information for obvious political gain.

The newspaper reported: “Mike Scheur, the former head of the CIA’s Bin Laden unit, said the leaking about the nuts and bolts of British involvement was despicable and would make a repeat of the operation difficult. ‘MI6 should be as angry as hell. This is something that the prime minister should raise with the president.'”

Shashank Joshi,: a British researcher,: wrote in the Telegraph: “These unthinking leaks are reckless and irresponsible acts of posturing that could have far-reaching implications for counterterrorism operations in the future.”